This disclosure relates generally to presentation of content by an online system, and more specifically to accounting for a battery level of a client device presenting content when selecting content for presentation.
An online system, such as a social networking system, allows its users to connect to and communicate with other online system users. Users may create profiles on an online system that are tied to their identities and include information about the users, such as interests and demographic information. The users may be individuals or entities such as corporations or charities. Because of the increasing popularity of online systems and the increasing amount of user-specific information maintained by online systems, an online system provides an ideal forum for entities, such as retailers or service providers, to increase awareness about products or services by presenting content to online system users.
Presenting content items to online system users allows an entity (e.g., a retailer, a service provider, a restaurant) to gain public attention for products or services or to persuade online users to take an action regarding the entity's products or services. Additionally, many online systems generate revenue by receiving compensation from entities for presenting certain content items to their users. Frequently, online systems charge an entity for each presentation of certain types of content items to an online system user (e.g., each “impression” of the content item) or for each interaction with certain types of content items by an online system user.
An entity may have different objectives for presenting content to a user through an online system. For example, an entity may present certain content items to entice users to request additional information about a product or service provided by the entity and present additional content items to encourage users to install an application provided by the entity. As different objectives for presentation of different content items take different lengths of time and consume different amounts of resources to complete, available resources to a client device on which a content item is presented (e.g., remaining charge in a battery of a client device) influence the effectiveness of presentation of a content item to a user via the client device in completing the objective for presentation of the content item. For example, presenting a content item encouraging a user to install an application on a client device having insufficient charge in its battery to retrieve and install the application prevents a user from accomplishing the objective for presenting the content item. Presenting a user with content items associated with objectives unable to be completed by a client device on which the content item is presented may impair user interaction with content from the online system and inefficiently use resources of an entity by providing content items from the entity to users who are unable to complete the entity's objective for presenting the content item.